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By Cecilia Smith, Administrative Assistant, ACS Green Chemistry Institute
In our next spotlight article on the 2023 ACS Sustainable Future Grant winners, learn about Nicola H. Perry’s recent sabbatical at Imperial College in London, where she gained experience in advanced energy materials characterization techniques while building international collaborations for herself and her research group.
Imagine if the world’s energy came from a non-fossil fuel-based source that is efficient, decentralized, quiet, and generates no greenhouse gas emissions. Fuel cells, platforms that use the chemical energy of hydrogen and other fuels to produce energy cleanly and efficiently, are a promising technology that has the potential to provide these benefits and enable communities to move towards a more sustainable future. These versatile devices can also run in reverse as electrolyzers, to generate green hydrogen from water, renewable electricity sources, and waste heat, or to convert carbon dioxide emissions into other useful chemicals.
Nicola H. Perry, Associate Professor in Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), works toward this hopefully not-so-distant future in her research on functional and adaptive energy-related materials. During a five-month sabbatical at Imperial College London, funded by ACS’s Principal Investigator Development in Sustainability Grant (PISD), Perry had the opportunity to deepen her technical expertise in this field through hands-on research while also building international collaborations for herself and her research group.
Perry’s time at Imperial College centered on advanced techniques to study ion profiles and kinetics in energy-related materials, with a focus on air electrode compositions for use in fuel cells and electrolyzers, which enable green H2 production. “These materials host processes determining the efficiency and lifetime of sustainable energy devices, and understanding their relationship to the materials’ processing route, and the resulting underlying composition and structure, is essential to rationally engineer improved electrodes,” says Perry. This work contributes towards U.N. Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) #7, affordable and clean energy; #13, climate action; and #11, sustainable cities and communities.
In particular, Perry learned a number of new research methods at Imperial College, including isotope exchanges, atom probe tomography, and profiling with low-energy ion scattering spectroscopy (LEIS) and secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS). The experience Perry gained, as well as the new collaborations with experts she built, has allowed her to implement several methods in her own lab at UIUC moving forward. “A particular benefit of these new collaborative activities is that my students have become involved in the work and have built their own collaborations with international researchers in that process,” says Perry. Furthermore, Perry’s time in Europe also led to a collaboration with the Institut de Recerca en Energia de Catalunya (IREC) and with plans to partner with researchers at Grenoble-INP in France.
Back at UIUC, Perry uses green and sustainable engineering as a foundation for the courses she teaches, and she has noticed the impact it has had on her students’ mindsets as well.
“When I taught a section on piezoelectric materials (which most commonly contain lead), I coordinated a discussion on challenges of working with lead, given toxicity and potential for environmental release. I was gratified to see the class bring this topic up again, unprompted, during a later student presentation on cutting-edge research into pyroelectric energy conversion using lead-containing compositions. Students raised concerns about lead leaching into the water and the potential environmental harm. They were adamant that there needs to be more research on alternative, greener materials.”
This semester, Perry’s students are engaging with a new module she developed at the intersection of green chemistry and solid-state ionics, identifying opportunities for more benign compositions, efficient and sustainable chemical transformation processes, life cycle analysis, and recycling.
“I’m very grateful to ACS for creating and funding the PISD grant and to Stephen Skinner’s group for hosting me. They enabled me to pursue a unique, international sabbatical experience to extend our impact in clean energy materials research. The PISD grant was also a bridge to access ACS’ growing library of resources on green chemistry education and the broader green chemistry community, which are propelling my evolving pedagogical efforts and vision for future research,” says Perry.